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Kids will be Kids, Parents need to start acting like Parents

I’m not a teacher. I don’t run a classroom or a school or claim to even know how. I’m just a parent and former less than perfect kid who now has children of my own. Society has handcuffed teachers and administrators in the name of making it better for school kids, but in the process they’ve screwed the whole thing up in many areas. Perhaps the one that distracts the learning process more than anything is the subject of discipline. Or in this case, the lack thereof.

When I was growing up, if you acted up in school, you prayed no one at home found out, because no matter what kind of grief you went through from the principal and whatever punishment was meted out – it didn’t compare with the havoc you would encounter from mom or god forbid if she told dad about it. Because you were guilty until proven innocent when it came to getting in trouble at school and rightly so. Why on earth would a teacher go out of their way to give you a hard time if you weren’t causing trouble? It didn’t matter what happened – what mattered is that you didn’t follow the rules and not done what you were told and the result was that you weren’t going to get the proper education and it wasn’t acceptable.

It wasn’t at my house anyway.

Here’s the deal today – and if you think I’m going to blame liberals, you win a cookie. A little angel gets in trouble at school and 75% of the time the raging parent marches down to the school (filled with union administrators) and demands the teacher be tarred, feathered, then fired. After the administrators are done laughing and spitting out their doughnuts, they get real serious looks on their faces about how they’re going to resolve the whole thing through conflict resolution and lots of meetings. Meanwhile, the parent is enabling her little kitten, claiming how he or she; “Would never hit another kid, would never smoke marijuana, would never call a teacher a fat-ass,” etc… Hey lady, yes he or she would, but that doesn’t mean a thing because that parent is certain that teacher has it in for her kid and her family and her race or whatever. It just couldn’t be her lack of parenting skills, no way.

Yes, it is the liberal influence in the school that has hogtied teachers when it comes to behavior in the classroom and allowed the inmates to run the asylum. Parents should have a major influence in the curriculum but not when it comes to their kids disrespecting a teacher’s authority and that’s what we have today. The teacher runs the show and kids raise your hand and get called on, or ask to use the john. When you get in trouble, take your punishment – instead of getting the ones in authority in hot water. What does this upside-down system we have teach kids about the real world and respecting authority? I can’t wait to see the look on their supervisor’s face at the kid’s first job when they goof off, get caught and say; “Wait ’till my mom comes down here…” Think that’s funny? I’ve seen it in real life, kids calling their mom when things go wrong at work, arguing that it’s not their fault they got fired. Then they go on to new jobs and make the same mistakes because they haven’t learned how to learn from mistakes because they never got their asses whacked from the first mistake.

There, I said it. Paddle their asses.

Oooooh, wouldn’t Dr. Spock be spinning? Well that A-hole ought to be dug up and tossed in the river for all the misery he’s caused with his BS on raising kids. What were we thinking with following that chumps advice? But I digress…

Back in the day, when I was young, I’m not a kid anymore – as the song goes – my parents as I mentioned, believed you were guilty unless something crazy proved you innocent when it came to getting in trouble in general – especially in school. Yes, there were some nutcase coaches and perverts looming in the education system, but kids were pretty savvy back then it seemed and we knew how to handle creepy Mr. Pelofovich and mean old Mrs. Rice just made us try harder. A lot of the injustices in life made kids work harder and end up tougher. But these parents who get the bad report card nowadays and blame the system or the books or the curriculum first, instead of checking to see if the kids ever cracked the book in the first place do not know how to handle raising kids. You’re not their friends, people. They’re going to hate you and that’s too freakin’ bad for a while – but believe me, it beats the hell out of visiting them in prison later on.

Ask yourself some time, why on earth with all the problems teachers have on a daily basis would they go out of their way to invent something about your child to get them in trouble? All it does is cause additional problems for the teacher. And if the teacher disciplines any given child, aren’t they doing it for the child’s good? Does this teacher or the administrators look forward to having you come down and yell at them? Oh yea, they’re just a bunch of lonesome cowboys, desperate for the companionship of some idiot who doesn’t know what their own kids are up to. Teachers today may not be perfect, and they may have their hands tied when it comes to disciplining the classroom, but I doubt that they’re a bunch of lunatics, stirring up a normally quiet schoolyard and classroom just for the pleasure of seeing your stressed-out face – all so they can collect that massive paycheck they’re famous for.

Get a grip people.

My parents loved me, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t have reverence for me, not like today’s brilliant little gods and goddesses. I turn on the TV and I see a promo for the Reality show with “Honey Boo-Boo.” She’s doing nothing but farting and belching and people are laughing. I don’t know how that fits into this article, but I get the feeling that parents across the country are treating all their kids like Honey Boo-Boo, laughing while they fart and belch instead of paddling their asses and making them do their homework. But kids are kids and they always have been. The best kept secret seems to be that they crave discipline. I’m talking about good old discipline that helps them and proves to them that you care that they come in at a decent hour and do their damn homework and make something of themselves. They act up because they want attention and acting up in school is as good a place as any.